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Andre Kahn had a wife and a daughter and a secret – he was gay. Though he ultimately came out, the journey that followed wasn’t always easy. Fortunately, thanks to a supportive community and a loving family, Andre was eventually able to live his truth happily and form his own “modern family.”
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:06
I’m Andre Khan and I’m from Queens, New York.
00:09
I was 32, married to a woman and had a five-year-old daughter.
00:15
I used to travel a lot back then in work and through those travels, I met several gay people.
00:22
It sparked something in me for which I started to have internal reflections and thoughts about.
00:27
I started to go visit my therapist who helped me to understand kind of the feelings that I
00:33
was having at that moment. My feelings were sort of percolating and all of a sudden there
00:38
was this explosion around my self-identity and my sexuality, and I needed to really dive into
00:45
that and understand what was happening there. And so she helped me to process that and work through
00:51
what it is to sort of look in the mirror and tell yourself that, Oh my God, I’m gay.
00:58
The next thing I had to do was come out to my family. I remember that week very vividly in
01:03
October. It was a Monday. I drove to my parents’ house and we sat in their living room and I
01:10
started to cry. I told them that I was gay. The first thing my dad asked me was, Are you sure?
01:17
And I said yes. And they both hugged me and showed me love.
01:23
We talked and, you know, they said, “Well, are you going to tell your
01:27
wife? When are you going to tell her?” And I said, I need to tell her immediately.
01:32
Drove home for an hour, waited till that evening, put my daughter to sleep upstairs,
01:42
came down to the living room and the TV was on and I said to my wife, “We need to talk.”
01:52
Then I told her that I was gay and she said,”What? Are you sure?”
01:58
I said, “Yeah. And I’m really sorry.” And she started to cry and I hugged her. There were so
02:08
many emotions that we experienced during that hour or two of the conversations that we had.
02:16
She got mad. We cried. We laughed. We decided that I would stay in the house for about another month
02:25
before we started to make changes to our family structure.
02:29
I started attending Thursday afternoon coming out sessions at the Compass LGBT Center in West Palm
02:36
Beach. I got a chance to interact with other gay men who had similar situations like I did,
02:42
but they were much older in life. And for me, I was in my thirties and I was coming out,
02:50
and I felt such a relief, sort of knowing that I had a long – I had my whole life ahead of me.
02:57
The hardest day for me was when I had to sit down and tell my daughter that I was leaving.
03:02
She looked at me and said, “Daddy, why are you leaving?” And I just hugged her and I cried.
03:07
And I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here. I’ll see you every day.”
03:11
I left that house. My dad – my parents were there to help me transport a futon,
03:19
a TV, a mattress and a folding table, which were the four items that I moved into this two
03:24
bedroom apartment with. I looked around this empty apartment, missing my daughter, missing my wife,
03:32
missing my family, missing the beautiful home that we had built.
03:36
With that, I also felt a sense of relief and I felt a sense of just, Wow,
03:44
I can breathe. It took me several months to sort of build up my strength and my courage
03:51
and my self-confidence to sort of be able to just accept this new person that I… that I was.
03:58
I started to go out to the gayborhoods and make new friends and meet new people.
04:05
And that was really helpful. Came out to my daughter when she was eight.
04:10
I remember I was living with my boyfriend at the time and I – we were driving home after I picked
04:17
her up from school and I looked over at her and I said, “There’s something that I need to tell you.”
04:22
And I said, Daddy’s gay. And Mike is living with us because he’s Daddy’s boyfriend.”
04:28
And she was like, “Oh, okay.” And that was it. It was very easy.
04:33
My relationship with my ex wife has changed quite a bit from 10, 12 years ago. We’re actually
04:39
friends now. We get along. We co-parent. We get along really well. You know, we’re
04:46
supportive of each other. Our primary goal is our daughter and we co-parent really, really well.
04:52
I’ve also since then found the love of my life. And I am married to my husband who – his name is
04:59
Mike as well. We’ve been together for about four years. The running joke within my family is that
05:09
there’s Mike #1 and then there’s Mike #2.
05:12
And so that’s an easy – and my dad’s name is Mike, so everybody’s name is Mike.
05:16
We got married last year during the pandemic. We eloped in Asheville, North Carolina.
05:24
And now, you know, I have this modern family. I have a husband, I have my daughter now who’s 14.
05:32
We have a dog, Chloe and a cat, Oliver. And so we have a very modern family.
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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